


Advent XXIV

by Tammany



Series: Assorted Advent Stories, Christmas 2014, All-sorts, some connected. [26]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, City Mice and Country Mice, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Holmes Management
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2796701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This installment involves a certain amount of standing out in the cold in robes and pajamas and slippers. But it's not that bitterly cold, and Mycroft provided really very warm flannel pajamas and thick, warm robes even if they are glam: They're warm enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent XXIV

“Well done, you!” Janine said, as she ambled out onto the terrace. Her voice was more amused and wry than scolding, though. She shook her head, ruefully. “For such a clever dick I swear sometimes you’re a sandwich short of a picnic.”

Sherlock sucked down smoke, scowling, then let it go again. “He’s a prat. Why does it always fall out that it’s my fault for hating to sit through it?”

“Shez…”

“Him prancing around ‘doing Christmas.’ Making a bollocks of it. He should have just saved the rest of us trouble and spent the day at Buckingham Palace.”

“I daresay the Queen prefers to spend the day with family,” she said.

“I daresay he does,” he said, bitterly, deliberately mistaking her meaning. “That doesn’t mean his family has to prefer spending the day with him.” He took another drag, and let it trickle out slowly, staring out across the snow.

She came and leaned against the rail beside him, facing the house, bum propped on stone, arms crossed over her ribs. “Those things are bad for you, you know,” she said. “And in this weather you can get the same effect without.” She huffed warm breath out into the cold air, sending clouds drifting.

“They are an ever present comfort in times of trouble,” he said, and sucked down still more smoke.

“Why are you so angry?”

He didn’t answer. She didn’t make him. She looked up into the sky. The sun was silver, not gold; the sky pewter, not azure. She thought about it.

“What do they call this?” she asked. “It’s not cloudy. It’s not foggy. But it’s not sunny and clear, that’s sure and certain.”

“Overcast,” he said, and butted out the cigarette. He frowned at it, and with a savage flick tossed it out into the snowy landscape beyond.

She nodded. “Hmmm. Yeah. Ok. Overcast. I can go with that.”

“Why are you out here?”

“Why are you?”

He looked at her sideways, not turning his head. His blue irises hid behind a fringe of lash, nested in the corner of his eyes. After a moment he looked away. He smiled, tightly. “I am having the traditional Sherlock Christmas Sulk,” he said. “Last year I sulked on the terrace at Appledore. This year I am sulking on the terrace at Holmescroft.”

“Planning on killing anyone?”

“Only if Mycroft comes to badger me for my ill-manners and suggest I apologize to all assembled.”

“And you get pleasure out of this?”

“Pleasure is hardly the point,” he said, reprovingly. “It’s a tradition, like the idiotic music and the holly and the ivy and the feast and the plum pudding. It wouldn’t be a Holmes Christmas without it.”

She nodded, soberly. “And that’s why himself called you up and made arrangements for a command performance. Y’ve done right by your brother, you have!”

He shattered into laughter, bending over, gasping out stunned glee. She chuckled watching him.

“Oh, that’s rich,” he said at last. “No. He’ll be doing the descant-sulk. High tenor self-pity in some isolated corner of the estate, telling himself he is much wronged and ill-done-by.”

“So you provide the baritone-bass and he does the upper tenor line?”

“And Mummy provides percussion in the form of pacing and fretful nattering.”

“And Father?”

“Sighs and waits for the intermission.”

“Poor bloody man’s a saint.”

Sherlock gave a crooked grin. “That he is.”

“So there’s nothing you like about Christmas?”

He considered. “Mince pie,” he said at last. “I really do like mince pie.” He sighed. “Mrs. Hudson will have heaps down in her refrigerator. I wish I were home.” Then he corrected himself. “No. She’s off with her sister and Mrs. Turner, probably nursing a hangover right about now.”

“Poor thing. So that’s it? Mince pie?”

“Don’t laugh. Mince pie is vastly underrated. Consider the choices: fruit cake, plum pudding, Yule log, or mince pie. Which would _you_ choose to eat cold the next day for the pure pleasure of it?”

She considered. “All right. I’ll go with mince. And that’s all?”

“I like the pub-crawl carols.”

“The what?”

He gave her a wicked grin, then rumbled out, “Wassail, wassail all over the town, our bread it is white and our ale it is brown, our bowl it is made from the white maple tree, with a wassailing bowl we’ll drink unto thee! That’s a pub-crawl carol, isn’t it? Or, Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green! Or what about this: Soul-a soul-a soul cake, please good mistress a soul cake. Or this: Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat! Or this one: The boar’s head in hand bear I, bedecked with bays and rosemary, and I pray you my masters be merry, quod estes in convivio!”

She laughed, and threw her own alto over his. “Caput apri defero, reddens laudes domino! All right. I’ll give you the point. Those are pub-crawl carols if ever I heard them. Maybe we should organize a few wassailing pub-crawls. Do you think Mike and his sweetie would come  along?”

He blinked, surprised, then said, contemplatively, “Lestrade would. He’d laugh his arse off and invite his Met team to come along with. And Mike…might. If Lestrade did.” He considered longer, and grinned wickedly. “And if Anthea came, too. And Anthea _would_ come too, along with a few more of his security team. They’d make him think they were forced to come along to protect him—but she’s clever that one. It would be the other way around in the end: how could he deprive them of one night of seriously enjoyable duty by refusing to play along?”

“See,” she said. “It could be fun.”

“He would hate ever second,” Sherlock said, gleefully. “Oh, I have to do it next year. I’ll talk to Anthea before I go.”

“And Lestrade.”

He paused, then said, gloomily, “Better put off planning with him till next year. It will be that long before he forgives me for poking Mike back.”

She studied him. “You do know that your idea of ‘poking back’ looks like returning a shot from a pea-shooter with a salvo of cannon fire, yeah?”

He grumbled under his breath.

“What’s that?” she asked, amused.

“He’s so damned smug…and mean.”

She rolled her eyes. “Y’ should see mine have at it. Makes yours look positively saintly. Really, Shay-Shay, he’s mainly just teasin’.”

“Is that anything like ‘I can’t take a joke’?” His eyes narrowed.

She refused to back down. “Yeah. It is a bit.”

“I wasn’t going to…” he huffed, angrily. “We weren’t doing anything that warranted his comment.”

She laughed. “Oh, come on, Shay. If you’d caught him with his hands up Lestrade’s robe like that…”

He pouted.

She chuckled, and changed the topic. “If you’re going to do a Christmas pub-crawl you’ll have to talk Mikey into doing Christmas in London, next time.”

“His flat isn’t big enough,” he grumbled.

“So? Bet he’s got the mad skillz to figure out something that will work. Maybe he can borrow a wing of Buckingham Palace after all.”

“God. I hope not.” He sighed. “Still. I wish we were still in London. Christmas in London is alive. Half the city never practiced Christmas as anything but a holiday in the first place, and most of the rest only show up for the caroling at Midnight Mass—and otherwise are keeping the restaurants and theaters and movie houses and pubs in the black for another year.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Even Dublin’s livelier than the country.” She tipped her head back and looked up at the silver sky. She smiled, hummed a moment, and sang.

_City sidewalks, busy sidewalks_

_Dressed in holiday style;_

_In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas._

_People laughing, people passing,_

_Meeting smile after smile,_

_And on every street corner you hear:_

Sherlock laughed, suddenly free and relaxed and at ease. He joined her, booming it out into the empty countryside in mad, joyful defiance of the peace and solitude.

 

_Silver bells, silver bells,_

_It’s Christmas time in the city._

_Ring-a-ling, hear them ring_

_Soon it will be Christmas day!_

They couldn’t remember the rest of the words, and quickly devolved into giggles and humming. Then she scooped up snow and packed a snowball, throwing it at him. He retaliated, and she ran squealing out onto the lawn. They chased each other, and made snow angels, and when they finally came back in, pink and damp with snow caught in the pockets of their robes and all down their slippers, they were happy… And after they’d gone up and changed, Sherlock was even able to nod a humble not-quite-an-apology to Mycroft—and he didn’t say a single snide word when Mycroft nodded soberly in return, and handed him the first present of the afternoon.

 

 **Nota Bene:** Let’s see, the pub-crawl carols are:

 

[Gloucestershire Wassail](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXC8IRL3Lis)

[Here We Come A-Wassailing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnvMQMLGSlU)

[Soul Cake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30inJVBsaVw)

[Christmas is Coming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez2HBK6HKmI)

[The Boar’s Head Carol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9Zczwsvhw)

Then there’s “Silver Bells,” the best song ever for urban Christmas! This one is apparently THE original:

[Silver Bells](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNwGVgfkcgI)

 

 

 


End file.
